The deaths of two postgraduate medical students at Andhra Medical College within five days, following another reported student death earlier in the year, have placed student mental health and institutional responsibility at the centre of concern in Visakhapatnam. The state government has ordered an inquiry, but the available details also point to a larger question: whether counselling mechanisms in professional colleges are equipped to identify and respond to distress before it becomes a crisis.
A 27-year-old first-year postgraduate student in the ENT department was found dead at her rented accommodation in Chinawaltair on September 28. Five days earlier, a final-year MD General Medicine student was found dead at her residence in Ramnagar. Police have registered cases and are investigating the circumstances surrounding both deaths. The reported death of another postgraduate student earlier this year brings the number of student deaths at the institution to three in three months, according to officials cited in the report.
The cases are not being presented by authorities as having a single established cause. Police investigations remain under way, and different accounts describe different forms of pressure. Police officials said the first-year student, who was from Hyderabad, had expressed reservations about continuing her course and had recently sought the return of her academic certificates. Andhra Medical College authorities said she had submitted a letter stating that she did not wish to continue the course and was subsequently counselled by staff.
Family members said the student had spoken about difficulties related to her studies. College authorities, however, said that no formal complaint about academic, personal or institutional issues had been brought to their notice. In the earlier case, the final-year student was preparing for examinations, and her family suspected that examination-related stress may have contributed to her distress. Officials said that matter was also under investigation.
These differences in the accounts matter because they show how difficult it can be for institutions to identify distress through formal complaint systems alone. A student may discuss difficulties with family members without submitting a written complaint to the college. A request to leave a course or retrieve academic certificates may be treated as an administrative matter even when it may also signal severe distress. The supplied information does not establish that this happened in either case, but it illustrates why institutional systems cannot depend only on formal complaints.
## Student mental health and the limits of counselling systems
AMC principal Dr KVSM Sandhyadevi described the incidents as concerning and said the institution had counselling mechanisms in place. She also said the college was making efforts to support students facing emotional or academic challenges. Health minister Satyakumar Yadav has asked the director of Medical Education to conduct a comprehensive inquiry.
The inquiry will be important not only for determining the circumstances surrounding the individual deaths but also for examining how the institution’s support systems function in practice. The central questions include how students are referred for counselling, whether support is available without stigma, how academic and residential pressures are monitored, and what happens when a student indicates an intention to discontinue a course. The supplied report does not provide details of the number of counsellors, the frequency of consultations, the staffing structure or the operating procedures at the college.
That absence of information is itself significant for public understanding. Saying that counselling mechanisms exist does not show how accessible or effective they are. A campus may have a counsellor, but students may still be uncertain about confidentiality, worried about academic consequences or reluctant to disclose distress to faculty members. None of these concerns can be assumed to have caused the AMC deaths, but they are relevant to evaluating whether a support system is capable of reaching students who do not make formal complaints.
Medical education creates a particularly demanding institutional environment. Postgraduate students combine clinical responsibilities, academic work and examinations, while also operating within a hierarchy involving departments, supervisors and senior doctors. The report identifies study-related difficulties and examination stress in the two cases, but it does not establish how workload, duty schedules, supervision, accommodation, financial concerns or workplace relationships affected the students. Those areas would require specific findings from the inquiry rather than assumption.
## What the national survey indicates
The concern at Andhra Medical College comes against the findings of a nationwide survey conducted by a Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force examining student suicides and mental health in higher educational institutions. The survey received responses from more than 2.43 lakh students. About 15 per cent of respondents said they had experienced a period of severe stress, anxiety or emotional distress in the previous six months. Around 9 per cent reported experiencing suicidal thoughts frequently during the past year.
These figures do not explain the AMC cases and cannot be used to infer a cause. They do, however, indicate that serious emotional distress is not limited to a small number of isolated incidents within higher education. The survey also provides a wider institutional context in which student support systems must operate. When a sizeable share of students reports severe distress or frequent suicidal thoughts, a counselling programme that waits for students to approach it may not be sufficient on its own.
The distinction between prevalence and response is important. Survey data can show how many students report distress, but it cannot by itself show whether colleges have enough trained professionals, whether students use available services or whether interventions are followed up. Those questions concern administration and implementation. They require institutions to document their systems, publish clear access pathways and demonstrate how support is connected to academic departments, hostels, families and emergency services.
At AMC, the state-ordered inquiry offers an opportunity to examine these links. The director of Medical Education has been asked to conduct a comprehensive inquiry, while police investigations into the deaths continue. The two processes have different purposes. Police investigations will examine the circumstances surrounding the deaths. The administrative inquiry can examine institutional procedures, communication, support mechanisms and whether warning signs were recognised or acted upon.
## The governance challenge inside professional colleges
Andhra Medical College, established in 1923, is among the country’s oldest medical institutions. Its history and status make the recent events especially important for the wider medical education system. Professional colleges do not function only as teaching spaces. They are also workplaces, clinical environments, residential communities and administrative systems. Student wellbeing therefore depends on more than the presence of a counselling room.
Responsibility is distributed across several levels. College leadership controls internal procedures and student support arrangements. Faculty members and department heads interact with students in academic and clinical settings. The state’s medical education administration oversees the broader institutional framework. Police authorities investigate the circumstances of deaths. Families and peers may be the first to hear about difficulties, but they may not know how to communicate concerns to the institution or what response to expect.
This distribution can create gaps if responsibility is not clearly defined. A student’s academic difficulty may be treated as a departmental issue, a request to leave may be handled as a records matter, and emotional distress may remain outside both systems. The report does not establish that such a gap existed in the AMC cases. It does show why the inquiry must examine the points at which these systems meet rather than focus only on whether a counselling facility was formally available.
The renewed demands from parents and student groups for greater attention to wellbeing reflect this concern. Their demands are not only about adding services after a crisis. They also concern whether institutions create an environment in which students can disclose distress without fearing judgement, academic damage or loss of professional standing. The available report does not detail the demands or propose a specific institutional model, so their implementation implications remain to be established.
The evidence currently confirms three reported student deaths at Andhra Medical College within three months, two deaths within five days, ongoing police investigations, a state-directed comprehensive inquiry and substantial levels of reported distress in a national higher-education survey. It does not yet establish the causes of the individual deaths or demonstrate whether existing counselling systems failed. Those conclusions must await the investigations and the findings of the director of Medical Education.
The next important development is therefore not another general assurance that support mechanisms exist, but a documented account of how the institution responded to student distress, what the inquiry found and what administrative changes follow. Until then, the events at AMC remain both an immediate institutional crisis and a test of whether India’s professional colleges can turn mental-health commitments into systems that students can access before distress becomes an emergency.
